Thursday, February 27, 2003

Snow again! Wow, this is a winter to contend with. Just now recovering from my basement flood as a result of the snow, then rain, and blockage of my yard drain tube that was blocked by snow. This may have been avoidable if I had reasoned out that the snow would backup my underground drainage system. Live an learn. I did finally have a word with my Bolivian neighbors about their runoff I've been dealing with for 15 years. Got their permission to install some piping on their downspout to route it to the back of my yard away from my house. This will have the added bonus of providing irrigation to a dry part of my yard.

Been very busy lately with household maintenance and renovation. I've made a lot of progress in decorating my upstairs den. I'm on the verge of purchasing some audio recording bits to add to my newly rebuilt computer. First I'll get some powered speakers and a USB audio card all from M-Audio. Down the road I'm thinking of adding an HDTV card to the PC. This would let me play with HDTV on the cheap. I also want to get and LCD monitor to replacing my ancient NEC CRT that still cranks along after about 10 years. Looking into getting a widescreen computer LCD (WXGA). This would be a good match for the HDTV tuner.

Also relocated my networking hub and cable modem to my utility room. I now have a pseudo wiring closet that is centralized. I should have done this a while ago but the flood cleanup forced me to tear everything up and rearrange. Good to have this stuff out of the way. Thinking of dropping in a server pc from my hodge podge of parts. Thought I might load up the Knoppix self booting cd initially and fire up VNC and then make it a headless server using my KVM switch. I could then manage it remotely. Not sure why I need a house server yet but I could start offloading WMA audio files or something for centralized access.

It's amazing how time passes by. I've been trapped inside quite a bit lately because of the weather. I had plans to go out today but the weather quickly cancelled that.

I'm getting a Starbucks near my house in the Fall of 2003. Yeah! I'll be able to walk to it. This will be a lot of fun.